In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads—in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. — Jacques Barzun

Archive for April, 2008

Reactions to Obama’s press conference from Ann Althouse, who reads closely and brings out aspects you won’t have thought about; Michelle Malkin, who isn’t buying a bit of it; and Wretchard, who observes that Wright’s theology makes hash of the communion of the saints.

when it sounds as if it should be the other way around. “Worst professor ever”—well confirmed. What on earth is going on at Dartmouth? Consider her qualifications for a position at Dartmouth Medical School:

After obtaining a BA from Dartmouth College, I have an MS in Genetics from UC Davis and a PhD in Literature from UC San Diego.

That’s what Bart Simpson told his family in “Homer v. the Eighteenth Amendment.” “I’ll go with you!” said Homer. Marge put a stop to it, and that was that—except, of course, that Bart’s drinking started a temperance campaign that led to prohibition. As the episode illustrates, things get complicated when the government gets involved.

That’s perhaps the moral of this story of a University of Michigan professor who takes his son to a Tigers game and buys him a lemonade—which, unknown to him, was hard lemonade. After a trip to the hospital, a couple of days in foster care, and a week during which dad was banned from his own house, things are back to normal.

That led me to wonder what the law is in my state about parents giving their own minor children alcohol. Here it is. Most states are not so lenient.

106.04 – Consumption of Alcohol by a Minor

(a–b) A minor commits an offense if they consume alcohol unless they are in the visible presence of, and have the consent of their adult parent, legal guardian, or spouse.

§ 106.05 Possession of Alcohol by a Minor

(a) A minor commits an offense if they posses an alcoholic beverage.

(b) A minor may possess an alcoholic beverage:
• while in the course and scope of the minor’s employment if the minor is an employee of a licensee or permitted and the employment is not prohibited by this code
• if the minor is in the visible presence of his adult parent, guardian, or spouse, or other adult to whom the minor has been committed by a court
• if the minor is under the immediate supervision of a commissioned peace officer engaged in enforcing the provisions of this code.

(Notice, by the way, the failure of anaphoric agreement and the gender confusion in the above: “a minor… they” as well as “a minor… his.” Thank you, gender-neutral language police.)

Lydia McGrew writes compellingly about pressure in companies to advance, to develop one’s career by changing jobs frequently:

there is intense pressure constantly to be changing one’s role in the company. This is billed as “developing,” “advancing.” “Move up or move out,” is the basic message. Even if, as does sometimes happen, you do well at your job and would prefer to keep doing it, and even if your immediate superior likes you and would like to keep you in your present position, the superior himself comes under pressure for not “developing his people.” Ambition is treated as worthwhile in itself, and its absence as a sign that there is something wrong with you as an employee. Not even a sign, really–as definitionally something wrong with you as an employee. Finding something you like and trying to keep doing it well, perhaps even learning to do it better and better? How passe! How quaint! How regressive!

I was thus confronted with an image of some previously unknown circle in Dante’s Inferno, a place of ceaseless, meaningless motion for the sake of motion….

In fact, this “move up or move out” imperative makes the old idea of being a cog in a machine look rather pleasant by comparison. Do you want the cogs in your car to keep randomly evolving into something different? Not at all. You might end up with a car that didn’t run at all, or that ran much worse than before. If the employees were cogs in a machine, their employers would be grateful that they keep on playing their coggish roles efficiently and well and that they do so indefinitely, making the company like a machine that just keeps on forever running sweetly on well-oiled wheels. If the model of employees as cogs in a machine is modern, it seems to me that the corporate world of “move up or move out” is post-modern, a world where everything must morph for the sake of morphing and where this grotesque and pointless movement is called “growth.”

Zippy Catholic argues that this is intrinsic to capitalism. I don’t think so. First, the “move up or move out” dogma works in favor of breadth of vision, but also works against expertise. Doing a variety of jobs, seeing a variety of aspects of the organization, is good training for top managers. But not everyone is a candidate for top management. Most people will not become a vice-president. For the vast majority, developing expertise in doing their jobs well beats developing breadth of vision. Second, expertise yields growth. Someone with thirty years’ experience can often solve a problem in minutes that would take an inexperienced person weeks, if it could be solved by them at all. People with expertise, moreover, can train others to do what they do, multiplying their effectiveness greatly. Replacing those with expertise with those without can conversely lead to a tremendous loss of effectiveness.

In any case, the dogma has spread far beyond corporate life. My church, like many under the influence of the church growth movement, is in its grips. The pastor constantly urges people to “step outside their comfort zones.” Teams of people with great experience and expertise in doing various tasks are cast aside in favor of those with no experience at all, and are not even consulted. The result: frequent attempts to reinvent the wheel, which consume lots of time and energy and generally result in something less effective than the original design. Maybe this promotes the growth of individual Christians (though I doubt it—most of us past a certain age had already grown and learned what we were good at), but it can be disastrous for an organization.

The Supreme Court has upheld Indiana’s requirement that voters show a valid photo ID. I count this a major victory for democracy. A fraudulent vote cancels a legitimate one, and ought to be viewed just as seriously, therefore, as a denial of someone’s right to vote.